A couple of years ago, I moved to Palo Alto to start a life with my then-partner who was embarking on a residency at Stanford Medical. Without a job or any friends in the area, I had only my partner as an outlet for socialization and support. (Can’t imagine why this already rocky relationship didn’t work out).
While I loved spending my days writing, I was spinning my wheels doing a lot of searching – for jobs, for friends, the nearest Target, my soul – and I spent a lot of time alone. So much time alone, in fact, I began to wonder: Am I getting weird? Socially awkward? Perceptibly separate from society?
There would be long stretches where I wouldn’t talk to anyone but my partner when he came home in the late evenings. Not for lack of trying – I was determined to meet people. I reached out to potential friends via Instagram and even message boards. One reach-out resulted in an actual friend date with one lovely, like-minded girl. Conditioned to live on less, the interaction sustained me for weeks.
Mostly, my interaction with the external world became largely parasocial, as podcasts became my main source of entertainment, information, and sadly, socialization. Dark.
A month and a half in, my sister came to visit, and I asked her earnestly over lunch, “Do I seem weird to you?” I remember asking this with a kind of gravity, concerned the isolation was slowly dismantling my personality. She laughed and assured me that I seemed fine. I was genuinely relieved. Apparently it took more than a couple of months to overhaul one’s entire identity, even if mine felt like it was dissolving by the day.
Some days in lockdown, I feel like this, like – though my heart is beating and certain external rhythms, like the neighborhood church bells, endure – I’m fading in some way. I feel it when I open my mouth to dictate something to Siri and I feel the strain on not just my vocal chords, but my entire being. I feel it when I cancel plans with my mom because I’m drained from working and running errands – things that used to be normal to cram into one day. I feel it when I learn of a popular meme that’s been circulating and I somehow missed it, like a ghost skirting the surface of the world but not able to grasp onto anything in it.
What I’ve found frustrating about both of these encounters with loneliness is that they shift my long standing relationship with solitude. I used to be impervious to alone time. In fact, it used to be downright decadent. Like many introverts, I luxuriate in self-isolation, stretching and gliding across it as if it were made of silk.
As Molly Fischer writes in The Cut, “It’s...appealing to imagine yourself as sleekly self-sufficient — like a snow leopard, or a plant. I liked being alone a lot of the time, and I liked thinking of myself as somebody who liked being alone.” I, too, felt this connection to my solitude, romanticized it into a super power or superior state of being. Sometime over the past year though, its silky texture has mutated into a scratchy polyester.
It seems to be understood that what made solitude so decadent in “normal times” was its sheer rarity. The modern world’s demands and ebbs and flows created nuance – something against which to compare the introversion. Sometimes, your weekend was packed with social or familial obligations, perhaps some frantic side hustling. And sometimes, on rarer occasions, you’d gleefully answer your coworker’s “weekend plans?” with, “Nothing! Absolutely nothing.”
Now, with everything flattened, there is no sour with which to contrast the sweet. Introverts are being forced to gorge on our favorite dessert, our metaphoric teeth rotting as a result.
Overindulgence has spoiled many of my saccharine, homey pleasures. Working from bed, at first a delightful indulgence, almost immediately gave way to back problems. The convenient proximity to the kitchen and ease of takeout, too, became a one-way ticket to Bloatsville. And some days the coziness of home seduces me into skipping physical activity altogether. One of my dad’s “isms,” something he repeated to us kids one particular summer was: “Moderation! Every thing in moderation.” This simple credence suddenly feels difficult.
The ideas in Katherine May’s 2020 memoir, Wintering, feel acutely relevant to lockdown. She writes, “This isn’t about getting you fixed. This is about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have.” I love this idea. It feels like loosening a pressure relief valve, or unbuttoning tight jeans.
May also writes plainly, “However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. Yet it’s also inevitable.” I find this hilariously sobering, so dark it circles back around to comedy. Her point hits though, because we do, in fact, all stumble into dark periods. Darkness is unavoidable. Give into it, but not too much. Moderation.
When I think back to being holed up in the Palo Alto apartment, I remember that at first, it felt palatial in contrast to the busy job I’d just left behind. It didn’t take long, though, for an emptiness to creep up where “the future” should be. It was blank; I couldn’t even conceive of what it might look like. Not being with the right person (which at the time I didn’t know, or didn’t want to know), or in the right place (I actually did know that Palo Alto didn’t suit me), created a blinding white abyss ahead of me. Negative space.
Today’s future feels blank in a different way. We don’t know what the world will look like on the other side, what will be reshaped as a result of what we’ve been through. In SSENCE’s “Letters to the Future,” McKenzie Wark writes, “Dear Future, I don’t believe in you anymore. Nobody does, but nobody will admit it.” Her punk point of view goes on to bravely face the current state of destabilization. She concludes, “Best not to have excuses, as that’s what you became….We’ll fuck and laugh and live our little lives as best we can.”
I’m extrapolating to my own small world when I say that, even amid my fading spells, I am grateful to simply “live my little life.” And in the same breath, “as best we can” feels like it cuts through any romanticism and concedes the limits of isolation.
Traditional rhythms of storytelling would conclude on a high note – offer ways it’s actually not so bad. But lately, in art and expression, there’s been a refreshing diversion from that narrative trajectory. High notes have been replaced by sobering, monotonous keys, as we’ve learned to accept, if not embrace, flatness. Silver linings and solutions, while not entirely futile, can rob us of feeling seen.
I don’t know what to do about the fading feeling. It seems to go in and out, swell and recede, much like the tide. Or, more accurately, like the revolving closures and openings of public spaces. Its rhythms make it feel bearable. A reminder that winter doesn’t last forever.
And hey, as bad as it gets, at least I’m not in Palo Alto.
10 Things to Fill You Up
Usually 10 Things is a random smattering of media I’m consuming, but this week’s list is all isolation-themed content. I hope, inversely, it will make you feel less lonely:
The essay that got me thinking about this topic, “A Dandy’s Guide to Decadent Self-Isolation” by Samuel Rutter for The Paris Review. There are many pieces that meditate on isolation and ways to deal, but looking at it from the point of view of a 19th century dandy character charmed me to pieces. Get ready to broaden your vocabulary, but also delight in the formality and theater of being a stylish layabout.
“It goes without saying that you should not be wearing sweats; you probably should not even own any. Your wardrobe should be seasonal and thematic; you may wear your tweeds to an English-style tavern, but not along the boulevards. A workaround for the effort of daily dressing is to invest in a silk dressing gown, or a velvet smoking jacket, and simply throw it over whatever you are or are not wearing.”
Any episode of “Urgent Care,” a comedy/advice podcast hosted by comedians, Mitra Jouhari and Joel Kim Booster. They give bonkers advice in response to callers’ pleas for help with their personal lives, but they also impart some truly tender, cogent wisdom.
Including it because it will for sure make you feel less lonely, as you’ll have no choice but to guffaw your way through the bizarro scenarios of modern relationships. Plus, it’s just nice to be reminded, through the anecdotes of both the callers and hosts, that we’re all feeling shitty right now.
The essay, “Lockdown Should Be Easy For Me, So Why Is It Like Doing Time?” by Ottessa Moshfegh. The author reflects on the relationship between the pandemic and her 2018 novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation. (Coincidentally, I read this novel while I was in my withdrawn Palo Alto phase. I recommend reading it if you’re into dark narratives and dark humor.) This essay is so goddamn relatable to me, and probably every introvert.
“I Have Come to the Humiliating Conclusion That I Am an Extrovert,” the essay I referenced above by Molly Fischer for The Cut. I love how she tracks our cultural impressions of introversion over the past few years along with her own personal experience. Like others who have written about reclusiveness, she recognizes the reason it feels so bad, why introverts aren’t able to “enjoy” isolation during the pandemic, is the removal of our agency.
Words of Women’s essay, “Dopamine Fasting.” I’ll admit, I didn’t entirely relate to this essay when I was working a 9-5 because I was too wrapped up in work to be indulgent (plus, 9-5s can become 9-8s during quarantine). But since being laid off, going freelance, and being left more to my own devices, I started to notice myself falling into addictive pleasure-seeking behaviors – Instagram scrolling, drinking more often, bingeing Netflix. This essay looks at how we can apply Silicon Valley’s pleasure deprivation hacks to stabilize our pleasure centers again.
The Playlist’s “21 Films About Social Isolation.” As if we needed an excuse to rewatch Castaway.
“How Have You Been?” – a short illustrated film about lockdown’s “sheer weirdness and mundanity” by Polly Nor and Andy Baker Studios. It’s strange and beautiful and I love the quiet, understated audio.
“The Class,” a cult favorite workout among Goop types, and incidentally sounds cultish? “The” anything sounds a bit pretentious to me. BUT. It’s actually just as moving and cathartic as I’ve heard. I had a good cry at the end of my first class, spurred by the instructor’s vocalization about letting go.
It’s not especially dance-inspired and doesn’t have the kind of musicality that I usually go for, but it is one of the few strenuous workouts that actually focuses on your relationship to your body and to life’s pressures.
The essay, “The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Relationships,” by Amanda Mull for The Atlantic. My friend texted this article to a mutual friend and me.
At first, I felt a little sad that some friendships fell into said obsolete category. I feared that something about the friendships weren’t “enough” to stand up to the new normal. But ultimately, I realized that there are many different kinds of friendship within the patchwork of life, that everyone is experiencing this phenomenon, and that this might just be a “pause” rather than an erasure.
Can’t say enough good things about Katherine May’s memoir, Wintering. I first read about it in Phoebe Lovatt’s newsletter, and it was also recommended to me by a friend and reader of this newsletter. I like letting the audio version wash over me while I do laundry.
“We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer, and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves. We dream of an equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun; an endless, unvarying high season. But life’s not like that.”
I’m working on recording an audio version of the essay portion for those who are on the TLDR front, so stay tuned for that!
Thanks for reading,
Vanessa
No, Vanessa, you are absolutely not weird! You long to belong and it is so healthy. Thanks for one more time filling up the vessel with beautiful words, images and suggestions.!
Rivka
Taken in stride, polyester can be as comforting as silk. This is one of your best writing, iridescent, probably because you delved bravely into your soul as well as your natural creativity